How many of you have “half siblings?” I’m sure there are quite a few.
Recently, these portrait photos just landed of half brother Joe, myself, and the incredible caregiver-to-mom-dog Tango. Then more from sister Kate, our sly family archivist. Got me thinking about the reality of both being - and having - a half sibling.
Of my 8 total siblings (at least those our parents have told us about :)), I have 7 half-siblings. Love ’em all, even though I only know 4 of them with any sort of depth: Joe, Luther, Larry, and Jim.
The other 3, Elizabeth, John, and David, I think about often, but don’t know too well, and may never. There’s still time. I’m hopeful but not expectant.
Perhaps like yours, my half-siblingships are a complicated, mysterious story filled with steamy romances (obviously) and a wide range of other things. These other things range from roller rinks and fishing trips to, you know - the nice and light stuff -like suicide, secret marriages, adoptions, and much more. I always say to others it’s not really a “family tree,” but more of a “family shrub” or sprawling vine. And the invisible roots are where things get really interesting.
And apparently, we’re not nearly as unusual as I sometimes think. Pew Research Center found that 12% of U.S. children under 18 lived with at least one half-sibling in 2023. That doesn’t even count the half-siblings living in another household, another city, or another chapter of the family story. So maybe the family shrub is more common than the family tree people keep drawing.
When it comes to our half-siblings, we may never even know half the story(ies). But we can certainly appreciate our relationship for what it is, now, and where it can go.
I’m going to just focus here on “half brother” Joe. My brofus, otherwise known as my bro-friend or brother-from-the-same-mother. We have different dads. One a sculptor, the other a mathematician/radical activist. Both likely magnetized to our mom’s beauty, brains, poems, politics, dedication as a teacher—amongst her many other talents and interests.
Joe was born in April 1992 during the high school baseball season. I was 16; Mom was 46.
True story: during a game, I pointed to the left-field fence and said to one of our biggest fans, Catholic priest Father David, “I’m going to hit a home run for my new little brother.”
Side note: at the time, Father David was sponsoring the community service hours for my dufus teenage shoplifting conviction that somehow even my little sister got tangled up with. The project was painting the church fences and walls white.
I shit you not, I actually did crush a dinger. The only difference is that it barely dribbled over the short right-field fence, only 287 feet or something like that. Not nearly a bomb, but still, a homer. I called it for Joe right there in front of a certified priest.
After the game, some buddies and I visited Joe and put hospital scrubs over our baseball uniforms. Our family friend Mrs. Lambert was a managing nurse on call at the time. I think it was Cory, Eric, and a few others from the team who joined me to go visit Mom at the hospital, where we all marveled at Joe. Pretty soon afterwards, me and my buddies went to Newport’s North Jetty, using the birth as yet another excuse to smoke cigars and hit the sauce.
Fast forward to now. Joe and I were taking Tango out for a walk earlier this year when we ran across a random photographer offering free portraits in his driveway. Naturally, we took advantage, set a nervous Tango on a chair, and enjoyed taking our first real portrait together. Two brothers from the same mother. And the dog.
It’s an interesting and confusing thing to be 100% fully friends but be called a 50% or “half brother,” yet share approximately 25% of our DNA. When we really think about it, especially at our different ages and with different upbringings, it gets contorted.
What’s incredible is that, despite it all, and the fact there’s so much we don’t know, we truly are friends and have each other’s backs. And you can count on both of us to regularly make odd, quirky facial expressions and have fun.
Also incredible are those moments, like the one captured in the photo, when we look at each other wondering, “Where the hell did you come from?” And then marvel speechlessly, “Wow. You are my brother. And I am your brother. We should get to know each other further.”
And: “What a trip. We might not be able to make sense of it all, but let’s make the most of it, whatever it is.”
These days, Joe and I, as well as sister Kate and even Tango, are all getting closer. Just like Mom brought us all together by bringing us into the world with varied men at varied times, for varied reasons...we’re getting closer to each other by coming together to be there for Mom as family caregivers. It’s not easy, but we’re savoring our time together. We’re building what we call a Sibling Thrivalry rooted.
We’re working together to help Mom navigate what’s next as she ages, taking on some responsibilities and coordinating together, while also realizing that this is a precarious journey that we need to consciously navigate with consideration toward one another.
Maybe that’s one of the strange gifts of being a half-sibling. The word half describes the biology. It doesn’t necessarily describe the relationship.
And maybe the relationship part is more common than we realize, too. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 54% of U.S. adults who have a sibling say they are extremely or very close to at least one of them.
Sometimes you don’t share a childhood. You don’t share a household. You don’t even completely understand how you ended up in the same family, in the same town, in the same galaxy, with the same weird goofy looks, dry humor or calf muscles.
But somehow, you’re still brothers and sisters. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to become friends, too.
That’s what Joe and I got. And I’m grateful for where we’ve come from, and the relationship we are building as half siblings but whole friends the future.